Alice of Wonderland
by A E Chelsea
Summary: Ivy had never really liked the children's story. One autumn day, while trying to write a paper on it she was disturbed by a little girl in a blue dress. "That book has my name on it," said Alice.
1. Cynicism meets Innocence

Chapter one

Cynicism meets Innocence

If one was to put on a scale those people who believed solidly in facts on the far right, and those who loved the realm of fancy on the far left then one would be able to place every person on that scale in between the two.

Ivy Robertson was a person who believed herself to be on the extreme far right of the scale. She had been quite imaginative as a young child, but somewhere along the way she had chosen never to let her imagination rule her or influence her in any way.

This was why she had felt sick to her stomach when she had drawn her first English assignment of the year from her Professor's ratty old hat. The assignment was to, as a demonstration of writing skills; write a short paper on why some fictional characters enjoyed long notoriety. Ivy had been hoping for Sherlock Holmes, or even Scrooge. She had drawn Alice.

Alice, of all things! Why, she hadn't even touched one of the Alice books since her father had read them to her at the age of seven! Ivy hadn't even thought about Alice since the age of 11. It was a perfectly ridiculous choice.

All the Professor had said was "Get Reading."

Ivy, seeing as she had no choice in the matter did just that. She had read both the Alice books, she had streamed countless versions of films of Alice in Wonderland, and read countless biographies of Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. She had read about the real Alice, Alice Liddell, and had even gone online and borrowed every possible pastiche she could find from the library. Nevermind that, she had read every online pastiche she could find as well as too much fan-fiction. She still had no idea why Alice was so popular.

Which was, of course, why two days before the assignment was due, she was sitting outside on a park bench, and staring at the one line she had wrote. It was a reasonably warm day in late October, and the wind was playing invitingly in the trees. Ivy was focused on her joke of a paper. She was so focused that she did not notice the rabbit until it had ran right across both her sneakers. She looked at it. It was white, it was wearing a waistcoat. It was looking at her with irony written across its face.

"Ha. Ha. Very Funny." Ivy glanced around to see whether the prankster was around. She wouldn't put it past some her friends to pull a trick like this. It was just like the Harris twins to do something like this, Jeff Harris and Mark Harris were the two biggest scallywags in her neighbourhood, and had at the age of nine achieved notoriety in what was known as the oyster incident. No one was around. She looked at the rabbit. It was hopping away towards the road. Whatever. She wasn't responsible for anybody's jokes.

She turned back to her paper. The problem was she herself couldn't see why Alice or anyone in the books was popular. To her it was just the story of a confused and possibly disturbed little girl wandering from place to place randomly. It didn't even have a proper plot for goodness sakes!

"Hello," a small sweet voice said.

Ivy glanced from her paper. The voice belonged to a little girl, about seven from Ivy's guess. She was dressed in what seemed to Ivy to be an old-fashioned blue dress. Her feet were in small black shoes, her hair was blond and her eyes were brown. She was smiling sweetly.

"uh...Hello?" Ivy said nervously. "What's your name?"

"I'm Alice...Hey that book has my name on it!" The girl, Alice smiled sweetly.

"Figures..." Ivy muttered. It was going to be that kind of day. "Where's your mum Alice?"

"At home...Have you seen a white rabbit?" Alice asked.

"Yes, but it's gone."

"Which way did it go? Does that book have pictures in it? What's your name?" Alice listed off her questions in rapid succession.

"I didn't see which way it went. Yes this book has pictures in it. My name is Ivy. Where do you live and where is your mum?"

"I live in wonderland. My mum is there."

"Okay, the joke's not funny. Who told you to dress like this and talk like this?"

"Nobody. This my very favoritest dress. What's that?" Alice pointed to a car that was whizzing down the road.

Ivy got a sinking feeling in her stomach. "That's a car. You haven't seen a car before?"

"No. We don't have cars in wonderland. What's that?"

Ivy looked up. "That's an airplane."

"What does it do?"

"It takes people across the world."

"Why?"

"um...because that's what it does."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Is your dad around here somewhere, maybe?"

"Dad's at home."

Ivy glanced into the sky. This was a problem. "So is that your Halloween costume?" she asked hopefully.

Alice looked puzzled. "What's Halloween?"

"You don't know about Halloween?"

"I don't think we have it at home."

Why me, Ivy groaned inwardly. The kid was obviously serious, and honestly believed what she was saying.

"Does anyone know you're here?" Ivy demanded.

"No. I was playing with the cat and then the rabbit ran by, so I followed him because I wanted to play with him. Can I see the pictures in that book?"

"Yeah go ahead." Ivy handed her book over to Alice. Alice hopped onto the park bench and sat down next to Ivy. Ivy tried to think of what to do with the little girl. Certainly she couldn't just leave her here. Maybe she should call the police?

"Oh, Alice darling. You've worried your Mummy quite terribly."

Ivy felt Alice stiffen and move closer to her. Ivy glanced at the woman speaking; she was short and rather fat with a scowl on her face. She was wearing a red suit, with a big red heart embroidered on one of the pockets. She was looking at Alice hungrily.

"Come on darling," the woman said snappily. "Come and give your Mummy a hug."

"That's not my mummy," Alice whispered in Ivy's ear.

Oh bother, thought Ivy. Hopefully it wasn't too late to get uninvolved...


	2. Murphy's Law

Chapter 2

Murphy's Law

"Thank you for taking care of my darling child," the woman's mouth said one thing, her face said another. From what Ivy could read from that face, the woman wanted her to go away and pretend this had never happened.

"Come on darling, we'll go home now."

Alice grabbed Ivy's arm. Tightly. Ivy felt like shaking her off and handing her over to the woman. She would've too, had her conscience not prevented her.

The woman smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "Come dear," This was said forcefully.

Ivy got up off of the bench, and gently pried Alice's arm off. "Um...Are you sure you've got the right kid?"

"What do you mean, girl?" the woman said with a sneer.

"No offence, but she doesn't seem to think you're her mother. In fact she seems downright scared of you."Ivy said with what she hoped was a level voice.

"You know children; she ran off, she just doesn't want to get in trouble with me."

"Excuse me, but I think you've probably mistaken her for another girl in an Alice costume. I'm sure your daughter is off somewhere else."

"I think," snapped the woman, "that you should keep your nose in your own business. You wouldn't want to lose your head, would you?"

"Is that a threat?" Ivy, to her dismay squeaked. "I'm going to call the police you know, if you keep this up."

The woman sniggered, "What will you tell them? You've been threatened by the queen of hearts? Will they believe you?"

"No," Ivy said carefully. "I wasn't planning to tell them anything like that. I do think it's against the law to threaten people though."

The Queen of Hearts yawned, "I tire of this, how much to get your nose out of this business?"

"Excuse me?"  
"How many times must I threaten your head to get your nose out of this business?"

"Look," Ivy said carefully, gently taking Alice's hand. The girl was cowering behind her back and it was easy to do so without the Queen of Hearts seeing. "I don't know who you people are, or why you insist on behaving like fictional characters, but I know one thing. I don't like or trust you, and I'm taking Alice to the Police station. They'll..."

At that moment the Queen of Hearts lunged for Ivy's arm, Alice shrieked and ran off and Ivy would gladly have followed. At the moment though, she had to extricate herself from the Queen's grip.

This happened to be surprisingly tight.

"See what you've done now?" The Queen sighed. "Now I have to go chasing after her again. You really should have kept your nose in your own business."

"Let go of me!" Ivy snapped trying to wriggle out of the Queen's grip.

"I think not. You're troublesome enough by yourself."

Ivy lost patience. She slammed her heel down on the Queen's foot. The Queen let go of Ivy's wrist for just a second to grab her own foot. It was enough. Ivy ran for all she was worth. Some vague protectiveness sent her dashing in the same direction Alice had gone. There was no sign of Alice.

Oh well, thought Ivy. She's not my problem anymore. She was immediately ashamed by this line of thinking. But still she kept moving and didn't bother to look very hard for the girl.

She made it as far as her car when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Ivy shrieked and jumped 10 feet up. There was a clatter behind her.

"Excuse me," a man's voice behind her said. "But have you seen a little girl by the name of Alice?"

Ivy turned around and immediately had to sit down.

"Why me?" she asked. No one answered. It was just that kind of day.

Alice had already stopped running. She had already gotten over her brief fright and had realized that she was hungry. So she stepped off onto the street in search of somewhere there might be food.

There was a squealing and a honking noise to her left as a pile off oddly shaped vehicles slammed to a stop.

Alice looked at them, "Those are very strange," she said to herself. "I wonder how they work."

She was just going to get closer to one to see exactly what made it tick when a bizarre person with metal imbedded in his ears got out of one of the vehicles.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the person said.

Alice wondered if it was a man or a woman. The person had long purple hair, and she thought only women had long hair. But he also had a beard, and she thought only men had beards. Curioser and Curioser.

"Are you an idiot? Look where are your parents? Come here you!"

Alice was frightened by all the yelling and had dashed off again. The thing seemed very rude anyway; it had even called her, Alice, an idiot!

Once Alice got off the street the man got back into his car. After all it wasn't his concern.

Alice on the other hand smelled something good. Something that smelled sweet. It came from a shop with a strange name: Starbucks. She wondered what kind of a thing a starbuck was and what you did with it.

She was about to enter when she heard a shout and some shrieking. From the middle of the vortex of sound she heard quite clearly, "Clean cup! Clean cup! Move down!"

Alice remembered that sound. She remembered it only too well. From a tea party.

That sound meant messiness. She wasn't going to enter that shop. Not for all the starbucks in the world.

Still, she would have liked to see what one looked like.

That wass when she spotted the woman. She was tall, and she was carrying a cup that said Starbucks on it in big letters.

She seemed friendly, and she had red hair. Alice remembered that Ivy had had red hair. Alice had liked Ivy.

The woman noticed Alice, "And what's your name?" she asked. "I bet you're Alice"

"Yes, that's my name," said Alice proudly.

"Are you excited for Halloween Alice?"

"What's Halloween?"

"Oh sorry, I guess you must have just come for a visit. Though, I'd've thought by now that they'd have Halloween over there, though you are in a costume so I guess someone must have let your parents know...Well, you wear a costume and you knock on doors and say trick or treat. If the people are nice you get a candy, if not...."

"Then what?"

"That's the fun part. But I shouldn't tell you. People already say I'm a bad enough influence. My own daughter thinks I'm awful." The woman laughed softly but she didn't smile. "So where's your mum and dad Alice?"

"At home."

"And where do you live."

"Wonderland!"

This time the laugh was loud and sincere. Alice didn't understand what was so funny. "But I do!" she protested.

"Sorry," the woman stifled the end of a smile. "But you're cute and you have such a cute accent. You're so cute I'll bet your folks are out of their heads with worry. How about you show me where you live, alright?"

"Alright, can you show me the starbuck?"

"Sure" said the woman, suppressing another laugh while lowering the cup. "See?"

Alice was disappointed. It was just a brown drink. She led the woman past the Starbucks.

"They certainly get into the Halloween spirit in there!" said the woman glancing into the window. "If I didn't know better I'd swear that was a real hare! And that hat! I wonder where it was bought, It's absolutely fantastic."

"Oh, that's nothing," said Alice. "I have a much nicer one at home."

"You'll have to show me," laughed the woman. "Now lead the way!"


End file.
